A Children’s Middle Earth

They entered the woods of Lothloin in their minds, children of Middle Earth, each one of them armed to fight the foes of Mordor with their cardboard swords and sheilds. They were the Fellowship, each one with their own story, and we waited to perform our elvish ambush.

As they crossed into the golden wood that autumn afternoon, we were poised in the trees and when they passed us, we jumped. We escorted them down a path to the Lady of the Wood and we re-enacted the entire scene, right down to the mirror of Galadriel. When our Frodo looked into a plastic bucket we jumped at the opportunity to act out what he saw in the mirror with imagined torches.

Frodo and the Fellowship were just ready to leave the wood when the voices of our mothers came calling into the woods announcing dinner was ready. Each day we visited our imagined Middle Earth, all of us playing the roles for men and elves, orcs and uruk-hai, until the very end when the hobbits returned to their home. When Frodo and Biblo had left our Middle Earth for the last time, we took a moment to evaluate our imaginations. It was time for a new game.